Sunday, February 21, 2016

On the editorial page

... this is the Republican-majority Arizona Legislature. While it’s busy trying to keep cities and towns from making local decisions about firearms and plastic grocery bags, it’s also considering, or has considered, bills that would make it illegal to follow federal law or orders on guns, immigration policy and environmental regulations.

The hypocrisy is rich.

The Republicans often talk about “local control” when it comes to feuding with and resisting the federal government. Funny how they’re the only ones, according to this bill, afforded that privilege.

The political philosophy of the middle finger — captured by Trump in all its vulgar, taunting, divisive glory — requires an ethical leap. It assumes that practices we know are wrong in our private lives — contempt, mockery, cruelty, prejudice — are somehow justified in our political lives. It requires us to embrace views and tactics that we would never teach our children — but do, in fact, teach them through an ethically degraded politics. Imagine your teenage son (or daughter, for that matter) calling a woman a “fat pig,” “dog,” “disgusting animal” or “bimbo.” Imagine your child labeling someone he or she knows as a “loser,” “moron” or “dummy.”

This is the evidence of poor character, in any context. For Christians, the price of entry to the Trump movement is to abandon their commitments to kindness and love of neighbor, which would mean their faith has no public consequence at all.

And Trumpism is an existential threat to conservatism. It is not a theory of limited government. It would use government, with augmented powers, to enforce a vision of ethnic nationalism, constructing a wall visible from space and conducting one of the largest forced expulsions in history.